TP-Link Omada EAP225 V3
This affordable AC1350 AP can be used on its own or centrally managed – it’s a great investment for SMEs
SCORE PRICE £53 exc VAT from scan.co.uk
If you’re just starting to kit out your office with Wi-Fi, TP-Link’s Omada EAP225 V3 could be the perfect first step. It’s cheap, costing just a shade over £50, yet it’s fully compatible with TP-Link’s free Omada Controller software – so as your business grows, you can add more APs and manage them all from a central console.
There are no compromises on features either. The EAP225 V3 supports concurrent 2.4GHz and 5GHz operations, and uses MU-MIMO technology to provide multiple lanes on your wireless highway, allowing it to support a large user base with minimal congestion.
Physically, it’s an unassuming thing, with its five antennae tucked away inside the casing – three for the 2.4GHz band and one for each of the twin 5GHz radios. Its single Gigabit Ethernet port is PoE-enabled, which keeps cable routing simple. And, thoughtfully, TP-Link includes a small PoE injector module in the box, so if you don’t already own a PoE switch that’s no problem.
The AP is a cinch to deploy in standalone mode. We simply plugged it in, connected to it wirelessly from a laptop and opened up the web portal. On first contact, we were sensibly asked to supply a new username and password, which replaced the supplied admin account. By default the network itself remains unsecured but this takes just a few seconds to fix.
Indeed, the EAP225 is pretty versatile when it comes to access controls. It supports up to eight SSIDs on each radio, each with its own security profile and schedule options, so individual SSIDs can be made available only at specific times.
You can also decide whether to mask or broadcast each SSID, and optionally isolate wireless clients from seeing each other. If you’re setting up a guest network, the AP can redirect connecting users to its web portal, which presents a customised AUP and demands a global password before granting them internet access.
Performance is very good: from our Netgear AC1200-equipped Windows 10 desktop located at close range, we were able to copy a 2GB file over the LAN at a speedy 60MB/sec. We also tested coverage using the SweetSpots iPad app and found we were able to get 43m down the main building corridor before losing the signal – so a single unit should be easily able to cover the whole of a small office.
For centralised management, we turned to the free Omada Controller software, which installed on our Windows 10 desktop in two minutes. One nice feature you come across right away is the ability to import a map of your offices, so you can use the heatmap tool to plan out your coverage. A pop-up menu at the bottom of the web console provides quick access to features such as guest portals, scheduled power cycling and
“One nice feature is the ability to import a map of your offices, so you can use the heatmap tool to plan out your coverage”
upload and download rate limits for each SSID. The software also comes with QoS preconfigured, so it will apply the same traffic prioritisations as provided by the standalone AP.
And when you want to add more APs, you don’t have to stick to the same model: alongside a pair of EAP225 V3 units, we installed an Omada EAP225 Outdoor AP and one of TP-Link’s older AuraNet EAP330 V1 units. The software immediately spotted all four as soon as they came online; “adopting” an AP disables its local web interface and tells it to pick up its settings from the Omada Controller software instead.
Once provisioned, all member APs present all SSIDs, so clients can roam seamlessly across them as they move around the premises. The statistics page provides graphs, tables and charts of what’s happening on each AP and SSID, as well as numbers for the whole network, and the “Quick Look” option helps spot bandwidth-hungry users.
TP-Link’s Omada EAP225 V3 is hard to fault. It’s cheap, it delivers good performance and coverage, and the controller software means you’re ready to add extra APs and scale up to centralised management when the time is right.
SPECIFICATIONS AC1350 802.11ac wireless AP concurrent 2.4/5GHz radios Gigabit Ethernet 802.3af PoE 5 x internal aerials (3 x 2.4GHz, 2 x 5GHz) wall/ceiling mount PoE adapter 205 x 182 x 37mm (WDH) web browser management TP-Link Omada Controller software included lifetime warranty